My wife was born and raised in Guangdong province in the People's Republic of China. Her father was murdered during the Cultural Revolution and the entire family was arrested. She spent seven years on a collective farm in the barren wilds of Outer Mongolia. She fled to America for political reasons.
Our oldest son is married to a Vietnamese dentist. We are multi-racial, not multicultural. There's a difference. Multiculturalism produces weakness and division. Assimilation produces unity.
Newcomers must assimilate. Their uniqueness goes into the melting pot and infuses all the existing elements with a new flavor, but in doing so the uniqueness disappears. What results is one, vigorous and vital.
Multiculturalism idolizes separate identities, and prevents the newcomers from being assimilated. It produces parallel universes. And it causes old men to turn against those who embrace multiculturalism.
It is indeed hypocritical of myself as I have a Vietnamese-Canadian barber. Her family came from the South and I enjoy having talks with her on Vietnamese cuisine and culture. I like her a lot and give her a large tip each time I get a hair cut. She; nor her marginal community in Canada, registers on my mind like the greviances I have against the speculating Chinese millionaires who've screwed with our real estate nor the East Indians who've come here to commit crime and practice Islam.
Though, her status of an individual and even her community would be threatened if we took in a million Vietnamese immigrants.
The same is true for the Japanese and Korean community in British Columbia.
It is no different than what happened to the historic Chinese community in British Columbia, which was largely Shanghai, Malay and Indonesian Chinese and but has since been destroyed by Hong Kong Emigres who have destroyed decades of Chinese-intregration (does "Canadian-Chinese" culture exist anymore? No... it's been destroyed overnight) and created a massive ethnic ghetto in Richmond and to a lesser extent in Burnaby.
As I mentioned before. This is not a new anti-immigrant attitude in Canada at all. 100 years ago E Europeans were feared, stuck in the worst possible homesteads surrounding the newly established Reserves and even put in internment camps to do slave labour.
Is that attitude the same today? No. Now when someone E.Euro immigrates they are welcomed with open arms while others are shunned.
Xenophobia is the problem not multiculturalism.
All recent immigrants from Austro-Hungary; including Austro-Germans, were put into internment camps. It wasn't an act of xenophobia but a concern for national security. We had the same policies during WW2 to a similiar extent.